Status Updates From The Zone: A Prison Camp Gua...

Has it occurred to you that socialist art aspires to be something like magic?You draw a bison on a rock face&that evening you get something hot to eat.Bureaucrats of official art reason the same way.If you portray something that’s positive,then everyone will be all right.But if it’s something negative,the opposite result will occur.If you depict a Stakhanovite feat of labour,it follows that everyone will work hard.

You write very well about the costs of freedom,freedom as a constant goal but also as a heavy burden.Consider what is  going on here in the émigré community.Driver's licenses can be bought for 100 dollars,a graduate degree for 250.It is painful to think that all this vileness is born of freedom,for freedom is equally gracious to the bad and the good.Under its rays,both gladiolas and marijuana flower with equal speed.

I came to the conclusion that it is stupid to divide people into good and evil. And also into Communists and non-Party members, into villains and righteous, and even into men and women. Since the time of Aristotle the human brain has not changed. What is more, human consciousness has not changed.And this means there is no progress. There is only movement, unsteady at its foundation.

Everything went downhill & as a culmination of all this–guard duty in a prison camp.What I saw there shocked me completely.For the first time,I understood what freedom is, &cruelty &violence.I saw freedom behind bars,cruelty as senseless as poetry,violence as common as dampness.But life continued.What is more,life’s usual proportions stayed the he same. The ratio of good and evil,grief &happiness,remained unchanged.